i’m not ready.

 

i wrote all of that,

hoping the words will make it true,

that if I say it enough,

it will settle into my bones.

it will feel like something i believe.

 

but the truth is-

i’m not ready.

not ready to let go.

not ready to move on.

i think it goes something like this-

i replay my footsteps 

on each stepping stone,

trying to find the one

where i went wrong

writing letters,

addressed to the fire

i wish you knew how sorry i am

i wish you could see my regret

i wish we could have seen through our pain

to see each other

i made promises to you 

that i never wanted to break

why wouldn’t you let me keep them?

why did you make me break them?

all i want is you in my arms

all i want is a time machine 

to take back the past few months

to take back the unraveling 

to take back everything i did that might have led to this

all i want is you

i never stopped.

 

i loved you. i love you.

fully, wildly, without hesitation.

i loved you at depths i didn’t know existed.

i was never looking for a way out,

never counting the exits,

never waiting for the moment to run.

but you held on like love was slipping,

like it had already begun to unravel,

like if you let go even for a second,

i would disappear.

you trusted the fear more than you trusted me.

trusted the echoes of every goodbye before me,

trusted the ache that told you

love must be gripped with both hands,

or else it would vanish.

but you never had to hold so tight.

i never wanted to leave.

i was always choosing you.

but you were so afraid of losing me

that you never believed i was staying.

maybe you wanted to believe me.

maybe you wanted to loosen your grip.

you did it before.

i thought you could do it again.

all i wanted was freedom,

with you by my side,

our hands intertwined-

not out of fear,

but out of choice.

i wanted you to choose me.

i desperately wanted you to choose me.

but love is not a choice i can make for you,

i have to learn how to let myself be chosen

and i know that’s not a choice you can make right now.

and i feel my own hands tightening,

clinging to the memories of you the way you once clung to me,

desperate to hold on,

afraid of what it means to let go,

to let you go.

but love is not meant to be held like this.

if it is real, if it is ours,

it will find its way back.

so i have to let go.

not because i want to,

but because i must.

when you’re angry,

when you’re hurting,

when it feels like i stopped loving you,

hear me when i say:

i never stopped.

i only started choosing myself, too.

i always loved you.

you didn’t need more of my love-

you needed more of your own.

and i hope, more than anything,

that you find it.

that you learn to love yourself,

you learn to love those bright eyes,

the tender, wounded parts inside of you,

the way i always did.

and if one day, 

that love leads you back to me,

i will open the door.

i chose you

i tried to give you warmth,  

wrap you in reassurance,  

speak love in a language

to soothe fears that were never mine to calm

you loved the way i filled the spaces you didn’t want empty,  

the way my warmth made the cold easier to bear.  

you loved the light,  

but you never asked what it cost me to keep burning.  

you reached for me endlessly,  

pulled at my love like it was something to hold you steady,  

never noticing how much it was taking  

for me to keep standing.  

you were drowning in your own pain,  

so desperate to stay afloat  

that you never noticed how much of myself  

i let sink so you could breathe.  

you couldn’t see past your own ache,

couldn’t see how much i was holding,

how much of myself i poured into the empty spaces

you were too afraid to face alone

and no matter how much i gave,  

it was never enough.  

i was never enough.

i was never going to be enough- 

you needed me to give you something 

that only you could give yourself.

i thought so much about your happiness,

and in your pain, that’s all you could think about too.

i didn’t need to occupy your every thought,

to be the object of your affection.

that wasn’t a sign that you loved me more

that you cared more

that you were more in it

it was a sign that you didn’t love yourself enough

to even receive what was being so freely given.

you thought that all of your words- 

your need for me-

was you returning that love back to me

but it was just another way for you to take 

love doesn’t demand to be everything-

the air you breathe,

the ground you stand on,

love wants you to stand on your own- it lets you stand on your own

it wants to be beside you, not above, not beneath, 

not the thing holding you together

not reassurance, wrapped in exhaustion

love does not need to be chased,

to be watched with a careful eye,

love does not make a cage of its arms.

it doesn’t need to consume or claim or own

love is a choice made freely, again and again 

love doesn’t say, you are mine

love says, you are free 

and still, i hope you choose to stay

if given the choice, i would have always chosen to stay. 

i feel

I've got a tattoo on my foot that reads "sento"

It came from the hands of an italian woman in an irish parlor

we laughed as I cried at the pain

after all, sento means "I feel"

she wrapped my foot in plastic and we smoked a joint and went dancing

just before I caught my flight back to the states

I came across the word in a small workshop in Florence

the artist had it printed on her jewelry

I asked her what it meant

'I feel' she said,

as she explained how that word embodied so many things-

a sense of freedom and fullness

anyone who knows me well, will tell you I need no help with this

'She came out of the womb with that word on her foot', they'd say

feeling is something I have always done fully

concealing has never been my specialty

'let it be' is not the course of action i usually take

I'm a mover, I'm a shaker

I like to feel all the feelings 

and leave no stone unturned

I'm not one to back down 

and it's fine until the tough things start to kick in

the confusion, the doubt, the loneliness, the vulnerability

because then I want to immediately resolve it

then I do something rash

I start acting out of self preservation

I have the conversation prematurely

Tears fall as I revert to worst case scenario-

the world is closing in on me

doubt is the only sound I can hear

and then I regret it all

this is when my feelings don't give me freedom and they don't make me full

they steal happiness 

and they make me heavy

repelling all of my self that i love so much

my laughter, my freeness, my lightness

they make me easy during the good times

and more than challenging during the bad

can someone else see past that much

could they love me that fully

i tell myself yes, then I wonder if the answer is really no

sento.

I must make sure that I am in a good state. So often I feel rushed- 

on the scout for my next binge, the next thing to stimulate my senses- 

that I cannot simply live... 

To go slowly through life, living in the present,

leaning into the idea that the only thing I control is the way I respond-
that is what I would like for myself. 

How much of my reality is shaped by perceptions and expectations? 

As Bernd put it- "If you miss the train because you were reading a book- 

well it must have been a really good book"

-excerpt from my backpacking journal on 9.2.16

As old as Woe

How old is that?

Some Eighteen thousand years

As old as Bliss, Joy

How old is that?

They are of equal years

Together chiefly they are found

But tho seldom side by side

From neither of them tho' he try

May Human Nature hide

-Emily Dickinson

I turned 23 yesterday- and as with most birthdays, the only noticeably different aspect of the day was being able to eat all the cake I wanted with #noragrets and get away with bossily informing my friends that they must laugh at my jokes and let me ride shotgun in honor of the special occasion. And aside from mourning the loss of no longer being able to relate to Taylor Swift’s hit song- 22 was a pretty good year for me.

I traveled to 2 continents and visited 9 countries- 7 of which I backpacked through all by myself (*puffs up chest with an unwarranted sense of girl power*). I passed all four sections of the CPA. I got an article that I wrote published. I shot more weddings than I expected. I completed my master’s degree in Accounting (feel free to refer to me as master parsons from now on). I got the camera I had been dreaming of for years. I made the big move to Portland and finally got out of the southeast. I landed a seasonal position at my fave shop (okay yes I know this sounds incredibly stupid but I have always wanted to work there and the employee discount is the bomb.com). And this may not seem like a particularly impressive list, but for me in those moments, it was.

In a lot of ways, I crossed a lot of things off of my bucket list and did a lot of things that I did not think that I could do. And if you had told me last December that this was what my 22^nd year was going to entail, I would have jumped up and down with excitement and cried tears of joy. But these things have happened, and my 22^nd year has come and gone and I don’t feel like jumping up and down and if I’m crying, it’s not tears of joy.

And while I have my moments of pride and unreasonable amounts of self confidence, on an everyday basis I don’t feel any braver, any smarter, any more accomplished. I sit down to write things and quickly stop, feeling defeated before I even begin. I am more critical of my photography than ever before. I walk into my seasonal job, convinced that they’re going to fire me because I am not near as fashionable as the rest of them. And as excited as I am to be in a new city, I still feel like a stranger there in a lot of ways.

And there’s a certain aspect of this that is due to comparison- and like all of our grandmothers have always told us- comparison truly is the thief of joy. Because no matter how many accolades I accumulate or things I accomplish, there will always be someone doing something more and the grass will always seem a bit greener on the other side. We all compare ourselves to others, and while this tendency can be managed, I’m not sure that it ever goes away entirely.

But I think there’s something a little more than comparison behind the things that I have been feeling. And in talking to my friends, I’ve gathered that maybe this is a common theme among the twenties crowd. We all have arrived at adulthood and some of us are less than impressed at what we’ve found. For myself, I expected to find a little more of a sense of importance. I want to make a difference and I want the things I do to matter. And you can study a lot of things in school- but they can’t really teach how to make a difference in the world or how to matter in a classroom. And when your daily routine consists of editing pictures so that people will feel pretty and arranging clothes in size order and ringing up people that literally are spending your whole month’s rent in one shopping trip, it’s really easy to laugh at how shallow everything around you seems.

And I haven’t made much sense of those feelings yet, and I haven’t developed a very good defense strategy against them- other than finding comfort in the fact that maybe this is something I should just lean in to. And I wonder if people like Mother Teresa (sp?) or Martin Luther King or Ghandi had the same critiques about their lives. I wonder if they often felt like there was so much more that they could be doing. I wonder if they even realized how much change they made. And not that I would ever impact the world on that kind of degree, but I have always been a big believer that we impact people more than we think. You know, that quote that someone smart said- “you may not be able to change the world, but you can change the world for one person.”

Sooooooo if any of my fellow millennials are feeling similar things- know that you’re not alone. We matter, the seemingly meaningless jobs matter, and I think that regardless of how much change we bring to the world- we will always feel that there is more to be done. So that’s where I’m at. Holla if you feel the same.